Joani Blank, feminist activist who founded Good Vibrations, dies

Published 3:33 pm, Thursday, August 18, 2016

Joani Blank sought to create a clean, welcoming environment for women by devoting her store to sex toys and education.

Joani Blank sought to create a clean, welcoming environment for women by devoting her store to sex toys and education.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Joani Blank, feminist activist who founded Good Vibrations, dies

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When Joani Blank, founder of San Francisco’s sex shop Good Vibrations, learned that she was dying of pancreatic cancer in June, she decided to approach death the way she had approached sex: no-nonsense and full steam ahead.

Ms. Blank died Aug. 6 surrounded by family in her Oakland home, opting to take advantage of California’s recently enacted aid-in-dying law to orchestrate the timing of her death. She was 79.

Up until her final moments, the pioneer of female sexuality served as a guiding light for others. She wrote on her Facebook page offering friends advice on how and when to reach out to her while her illness worsened and sharing her thoughts on her impending death.

“There is sadness in knowing that your life is going to end soon, but there is real freedom and liberation in that knowledge as well,” she wrote on July 2. “And in the time ahead I’m going to embrace that freedom as best I can.”

Part of this embrace meant thwarting the conventions of death itself. Ms. Blank decided she did not want a funeral and instead organized a celebration of life at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland so she could say goodbye to friends, family and admirers. Hundreds arrived to celebrate Ms. Blank’s lengthy career as an activist, entrepreneur and champion of feminist ideals.

“She was doing for death what she did for self-pleasuring,” said Carol Queen, sexologist for Good Vibrations and longtime friend of Ms. Blank’s. “She really wanted to take death out of the space of euphemism, out of the shadows, and allow people to discuss it. To look at this natural part of life.”

Honest communication and interpersonal connection were the cornerstones of Ms. Blank’s life. She founded Good Vibrations in San Francisco’s Mission District in 1977, hoping to appeal to women who would otherwise shy away from adult shops by creating a no-nonsense, clean environment for sex toys and sex education. It was the second store of its kind in the country — a sex shop founded by a woman for women.

A vibrator store in the Bay Area hardly seems novel in 2016, but in the 1970s, when Ms. Blank pioneered the idea, she was breaking new ground. She conceived the idea for Good Vibrations while working with famous sex therapist Lonnie Barbach and women struggling to achieve orgasm. Ms. Blank learned through interviews that many everyday women weren’t comfortable purchasing vibrators because of the environment they were typically sold in. She wanted Good Vibrations to be a comfortable and safe space for any and all customers.

Ms. Blank extended this interest to publishing, founding Down There Press, a sex-positive publishing company. She wrote multiple books, including a “Playbook for Women About Sex,” and even invented her own sex paraphernalia — the Butterfly Vibrator and temporary tattoos for breasts.

Ms. Blank’s sex-positive and activist aura seems quintessentially Bay Area, but she was born and raised in a Boston suburb. In fact, Ms. Blank lived all over the country before landing in San Francisco in 1971. She studied anthropology and sociology at Oberlin College in Ohio, and public health at the University of Hawaii and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

“Joani and the San Francisco of the 1970s were a perfect match,” Queen said. “It’s not surprising she stayed here for the rest of her life.”

Ms. Blank sold Good Vibrations in 1992 but remained actively involved with the company until her death. Almost 40 years after its founding, Good Vibrations now has seven storefronts in the Bay Area and a Massachusetts location. It will soon open a ninth in Santa Cruz.

Always full of energy and new ideas, Ms. Blank dedicated herself to the First Unitarian Church choir and the Cohousing Association of the United States — a group that encourages communal living as a sustainable and equitable housing method. Ms. Blank was living at a co-housing center in Oakland at the time of her death, a way of living she hoped could teach others.

“Her life was based on advancing social justice issues, and the bigger picture always took precedence over her personal struggles,” her daughter, Amika Sergejev, wrote on Facebook. “This fierce revolutionary woman has taught us all so much.”